FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. To 20 January.
Sheffield
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
book by Joseph Stein music by Jerry Bock lyrics by Sheldon Harnick
Crucible Theatre To 20 January 2007
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & 13, 20, 27 Dec, 10, 17 Jan no performance 25 Dec 2.30pm
Audio-described/BSL Signed/Touch Tour/Post-show discussion 14 Dec
Captioned 20 Jan 2.30pm
Pre-show lecture 16 Jan
Runs 3hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0114 249 b6000
www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 December
Pogroms and family rows for Christmas. How lifelike can theatre get?
When Fiddler, adapted from stories by Sholom Aleichem, appeared in the 1960s, its picture of a Jewish community forced from their early 20th-century Russian shtetl would have seemed both part of the long Jewish displacement and a step on the road to the unimaginable oppression of Nazi Germany.
It still is, but as milkman Tevye and his neighbours are given only days to sell-up and move on, there’s wider reference now. And it’s all done so nicely, with profuse apologies from the local Constable for the inconvenience of ethnic cleansing. He’s a good man, but we all know what happens when good men do nothing.
Lindsay Posner’s production certainly gives the drama full value. And Peter McKintosh’s revolving wood-frame setting ingeniously creates the sense of a community, fluidly mixing interior and exterior scenes. For “Tradition” (the opening number) is under more than political threat. Henry Goodman sings his famous “If I Were a Rich Man” and other numbers very well, but he also combines forcefulness with understatement magnificently as the new age brings challenges from within both his family and the Jewish community to custom and paternal authority.
No number in Jerry Bock’s score recaptures the bright confidence of that opening chorus; rightly so. Posner, Goodman and other finely-performed family members, especially Beverley Klein’s forceful wife Golde, but also Frances Thorburn and Alexandra Silber as Tevye’s older daughters who reject tradition in their marriages, resist any temptation to score easy comic points, always playing the truth of characters and relationships.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t comic moments – Tevye’s attempt to assert himself by a quick glance at his son-in-law’s new sewing-machine is excellent. But it means the most searching love-song, a questioning duet between a long-married couple, has a truth that deepens its piquancy, while a family ‘dream-sequence’ mixes dramatic purpose with colourful staging (including one of many fine contributions by Peter Mumford’s lighting).
The opening act is immensely long, partly owing to the dramatic detail, and in its grey hues perhaps overmuch so for Christmas-season appetites. But its dramatic understanding and outstanding central performances make this production amazingly successful.
Fruma-Sarah/Shandel: Juliet Alderdice
Fiddler: Stephane Anelli
Sasha: Cameron Ball
Chava: Natasha Broomfield
Mordecha: Tomm Coles
Constable/Yussel: Steve Fortune
Tevye: Henry Goodman
Perchik: Damian Humbley
Motel: Gareth Kennerley
Golde: Beverley Klein
Yente/Grandma/Zeitel: Julie Legrand
Lazar Wolf: Victor McGuire
Fyedka/Beggar: Steven Miller
Avram: Vincent Pirillo
Mendel: Alex Ruocco
Hodel: Alexandra Silber
Tzeitel: Frances Thorburn
Shprintze: Ellie Bermingham/Alice Evans
Bielke: Rosie Evans/Rheanna Griffin
Russians: Alistair Reirh, Jonathan Richards
Yeshiva Boys: Kit Carnell/Ashley Clearly/Joe Herdman/Ben Lydiat
Director: Lindsay Posner
Designer: Peter McKintosh
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Music Arranger: Sophie Solomon
Music director: Dane Preece
Choreographer: Kate Flatt
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer
Assistant director: Allison Troup Jensen
2006-12-09 12:59:23